What is this?The Rock Band: Harmonies Project is an ongoing project that was initially created to add vocal harmonies to pre-Rock Band 3 official DLC tracks that did not have them. Since then, it has expanded into a project which looks to add various features, fixes and optional variants to pre-RB3 DLC and RBN 1.0 tracks. At this time, the types of features currently falling under the RB:HP umbrella are the following:

Vocal harmony upgrades.

Pro drum upgrades (for RBN 1.0 songs).

Custom Pro Guitar/Pro Bass upgrades.

Keys/Pro Keys upgrades.

Non-score impacting fixes for songs, both pre- and post-RB3.

Variants allowing you to further customize library sorting (e.g. different album/artist classifications).

New chart variants, such as misheard lyrics or rhythm-on-keys (only for songs without an existing keys part).

As of this writing, we have currently provided upgrades for all pre-Rock Band 3 core game discs (track packs are not yet complete) as well as a large assortment of DLC content (see the spreadsheet for a full summary).

How does it work?The project allows us to issue upgrades by taking advantage of Harmonix's existing "upgrade" format used for official pro guitar/pro bass upgrades. These upgrades allow us to replace and add charts to songs that did not previously have them while leaving your original content intact. By using this upgrade format, we do not have to distribute the original audio or other components of the original package, ensuring that file sizes are small and piracy is nearly non-existent.

Adding harmonies and keys upgrades, or making changes to song information, requires an additional "tricking the song cache" step, explained in the documentation. All other upgrades (e.g. fixes and pro guitar/bass/drums) merely require the applicable upgrade file being introduced into your system.

Best of all, since this process uses the upgrade schema, which still works with CONs under Title Update 5, RB:HP upgrades can be deployed in both a customs-friendly TU4 environment and an online-friendly TU5 environment.

For more information, please visit the spreadsheet and review the main page's FAQ and the Questions/Comments page for answers to many received questions; if your question has not been answered here or there, feel free to reply with your question or e-mail the project e-mail address.

Just as a note, holiday stuff has been a bit crazy this year, and I haven't had time to chart anything for next week's release, so it may or may not be next week depending on what I can get done tomorrow night, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'm fortunately on vacation /until/ next Friday so I may be able to power through it.

Just as a note, holiday stuff has been a bit crazy this year, and I haven't had time to chart anything for next week's release, so it may or may not be next week depending on what I can get done tomorrow night, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I'm fortunately on vacation /until/ next Friday so I may be able to power through it.

You definitely deserve a break with all the work that you put into this project! Merry Christmas!

C3's doing a NYE release today, but I'm not done charting. It will be done for Friday (probably), but where we don't have a C3 release, I think I'm going to sit on it until next Friday (I'll try and get videos up in the interim), and then we'll resume the 'regular' schedule with another release two weeks after that.

I just did the Harmony Project Upgrades with the Master Package. Everything went just fine, the harmonies appeared and they work ingame.
But I have two strange bugs (I think).

First, I have a problem with Blue Öyster Cult. The band name appears like this : Blue Ï¿ster Cult everywhere (in the song list, in the details when you press Y and when the name of the song and the band name appears when you start to play the song).

Second, my game constantly loads two pieces of downloadable content every time I launch the game. Is it a normal behaviour ?

I did the Harmony project with TU4 and no customs songs on my flashdrive.

The BOC is a known, I have yet to be able to "rebuild" the songs.dta file properly on my machine for whatever reason. I'm getting a new one soon, so, we'll see. I've had some people say they fixed it on their machines... still kinda waiting for someone to get me a working file so I can test and replace.

I've seen content loading for a while in my game -- not sure if it's bad files or a duplicate id or something -- but I haven't seen any problems yet. If it's doing a 'full load' of the content every time, it could be a song cache issue, but if it's working as expected you can probably ignore it. Definitely let me know if you see any other weirdness.

I had this same BOC issue on the PS3. Try opening the DTA in Notepad and select "Save As". In the pop-up save box, there is an "Encoding" drop down box at the bottom next to the "Save" button. The encoding will probably be set to ANSI; change this to UTF-8 and save.

This process fixed the issue on Playstation; hopefully it will work on Xbox too

I had this same BOC issue on the PS3. Try opening the DTA in Notepad and select "Save As". In the pop-up save box, there is an "Encoding" drop down box at the bottom next to the "Save" button. The encoding will probably be set to ANSI; change this to UTF-8 and save.

Yeah, fiddling with encoding fixed it for me on some other songs (I also had to use the type of encoding used by the packager when it merges the files), but I couldn't get it to take on the BOC songs (using Notepad and Notepad++), and it looks like some others (Maximo Park) have possibly 'reverted' to a broken state, so I'm hoping to get someone else's fixed-and-tested files that I can sub in.

I couldn't get it to take on the BOC songs (using Notepad and Notepad++), and it looks like some others (Maximo Park) have possibly 'reverted' to a broken state

Hmmm, it's weird that it wouldn't take or would spontaneously revert. With the PS3, I have noticed that the C3CONTool will revert the DTA to ANSI if I make changes to the DTA with the pack editor. Only the editor does this, it doesn't happen when I merge new songs. I just have to remember to re-save the DTA as UTF-8 after using the editor. Perhaps this is also true for Xbox?

My code for the Packager is set to use UTF-8 encoding iirc as I had been running under a different regional setting for a while that was causing problems... but I'll double-check my source. It seems to just be the odd song here and there doing it, though.

After follow the writen guide and the tutorial video (the most of the guide) I can play those upgrades!- Time to go back to mustang guitar-

Thanks for taking your time doing the tutorial and the guide -I love you guys!-.

I didn't get any troubles making the process, so I think everything is ok.

I'm a little paranoid so I did all the process offline.

I have read that you can play online with RBHP (or that I understood), so I imagine that this project doesn't affect the leaderboards because the new charts (keys, harmonies and pro bass/guitar doesn't exist in rock central servers so I imagine there is no way to post those scores there.

As I said, I just imagine, so I want to know if I can play online (or at least conected to xbox live) without risk of being banned.

If yes, I imagine I have to copy the song cache and the upgrade file to the USB device I use to play online (because I have 2, one with TU4 and the customs song and another profile to play offline and the other one with the TU5 and my saved game I use to play online). I'm not sure about this so please help.

Now 2 things:

You changed my mind about not to purchase RBN 1.0 songs because the issues with pro drums. Now I will be glad to purchase them

The other thing, I am not a musician, but I am sure that We got the beat from RB2 has keys, and I'll love play the keys for that song.

I am not aware of anyone being banned for playing customs (back when TU4 was the newest patch) or RBHP 'online', but I can't promise anything. I always play them offline anyway. You may need to re-do the process w/ the TU5 stick to ensure it sticks (people have reported problems in the past if they built w/ different Title Updates).